The city of Roseville has approved a mid-rise building ordinance that the city
claims is the first of its kind in the state to address fire safety issues for four-to six-story buildings in height.

The ordinance, passed unanimously on Wednesday, requires a fire command center of a certain size, fire-fighting equipment storage, smoke management system, a fire alarm system that allows broadcasting of voice commands to building occupants, and a backup generator.

The estimated costs for a building of 158,000 square feet is about $311,000. That is significantly less than if a high-rise standard were applied to buildings of medium height, the city says.

The ordinance is expected to be enacted with a second vote by the City Council next month.

Is this a measure to encourage mid-rises or to discourage them I can't tell?

While I barely leave the city (downtown-midtown grid) I'm still interested in what other parts of Sacramento are up to. I'd also like to see what the suburbs look like through the lens of someone with a good and unconventional eye. I just don't get out to them to know or take pic myself. If anyone has any pics to share that would be cool. I'd like to see Zinfandel/50, Natomas, and Roseville.

While I barely leave the city (downtown-midtown grid) I'm still interested in what other parts of Sacramento are up to. I'd also like to see what the suburbs look like through the lens of someone with a good and unconventional eye. I just don't get out to them to know or take pic myself. If anyone has any pics to share that would be cool. I'd like to see Zinfandel/50, Natomas, and Roseville.

I took Toffler's Third Wave book off the shelf last night and read that -in the past we thought that 'small was beautiful' or that 'big is better' but in the future we'll see that 'small within big is beautiful and better'.

North Natomas: Visions of a community neighborhood lost in a car-oriented suburb
By Mary Lynne Vellinga - mlvellinga@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Before the home construction crews and bulldozers descended on the flat plain of North Natomas, city leaders made their vision clear: The northern frontier of Sacramento would be a pedestrian-friendly place where people could work, play and shop in the same neighborhood.

Not only that, this city within a city would pay for itself. The houses, stores and offices would generate enough fees and taxes to build roads and community facilities as well as pay for public safety and other city services.

Eight years and 15,000 homes later, city leaders say the reality has fallen well short of that vision. North Natomas doesn't look or feel much different from nearby suburbs. In some respects, it's more car-oriented than most because its roads are oversized to handle traffic from Arco Arena.

"It still is a suburban community, and I think what we envisioned was something that would be more than a suburban community," Councilman Steve Cohn said at a recent council workshop on growth.

Land once envisioned for job centers has been rezoned for big box stores, served by broad, traffic-clogged roads. More rezoning proposals are in the works. A promised light-rail line may be decades away, and bus service is sparse. Sound walls separate neighborhoods from sidewalks and streets.

On a recent Saturday, Mayor Heather Fargo gave a driving tour to illustrate North Natomas' flaws. "Look at this poor guy trying to cross the street," she exclaimed as her car approached the offramp from Interstate 80 on Truxel Road, en route to shopping centers on the other side.

In the Natomas Marketplace and Natomas Promenade shopping centers, she said, "You can't even go from one major store to another without driving."

City amenities undelivered

Much to the irritation of some new Natomas residents, the city also has not delivered promised improvements such as a police station, a second fire station, community centers and traffic lights at key intersections. The regional park remains an open field, and the finance plan for North Natomas doesn't contain the money to pay for it.

Schools are another sore point. Each of North Natomas' 14 "villages" was supposed to be anchored by an elementary school. But in three separate neighborhoods – Natomas Central, Westlake and Natomas Meadows – the school district has abandoned plans to build.

North Natomas' flaws have come to the forefront in recent weeks as Sacramento moves ahead on proposals to annex thousands of acres of farmland north of the city limits.

Fargo said the unfinished business in North Natomas should give the city pause before it annexes more land. "Frankly, we're not finished with North Natomas," she said.

Councilman Ray Tretheway focuses on the positive. The community has lots of bike paths, he said, and three small shopping centers people can walk to. "I talk to a lot of average people," he said. "They love Natomas. They're going crazy over it."

Yet residents attending recent meetings haven't been cheery. They demand that the city deliver promised amenities before moving to new territory.

"They feel they were tricked and their leaders have failed them," said Westlake resident Tom Reavey, a Sacramento County Taxpayers League board member. "Natomas as built bears no relationship to the community plan. The community plan called for walkable communities with neighborhood schools.

"What we've ended up with is almost the polar opposite," he said. "We've got traffic-choked, wide-laned major streets with little to no public transportation options, little pedestrian access, and scant walkability or bikeability."

In September, when a 12-year-old Natomas Middle School student was fatally struck walking on the Del Paso Road bridge over Interstate 5, some blamed the city. Signals planned for the crossings at I-5's onramp and offramp haven't been installed. "It really just tore at us," said resident Ken Stevenson."That's been a dangerous situation for years."

The finance plan for North Natomas lists traffic signals on Del Paso Road as one of the planned improvements. Dan Roth, Tretheway's district director, said the current schedule is to install them by 2009.

Earlier this year, acting on a request from the Natomas Community Association, the Sacramento County grand jury scrutinized North Natomas. Its final report called for an audit comparing the results of the Natomas development with the goals the city originally set, as well as its spending on improvements.

The City Council rejected the recommendation, saying that the grand jury report was based on outdated information, and that city finances are routinely audited.

Lack of services defended

The city defended its performance on delivering services to North Natomas, citing several reasons planned improvements failed to materialize.

A major reason: Not everything was included in the developer-funded North Natomas finance plan. Some things, such as freeway interchanges and a regional park, were left out because they were deemed community-wide benefits. Only part of the cost of the police station was covered.

The city took other items off the table to reduce the fees developers would charge homebuyers. The second fire station and three of four planned community centers are in this category.

"We were cautious about overburdening the development with fees because we really wanted it to get started," said Planning Director Carol Shearly. "We didn't know how far we could push."

As it turned out, the city's concern was unwarranted. With the housing market boiling, what was supposed to be a 25-year plan was half-built within six years. Sales have since declined along with the housing market.

Officials said rising construction costs also hampered the city's ability to deliver improvements, and government aid didn't materialize as planned.

"We haven't seen the federal and state monies we anticipated in this plan," said Mark Griffin, the city's fiscal manager.

Unrealistic expectations?

Fargo, who represented North Natomas before she was elected mayor, said she thinks new residents hold unrealistic expectations for how quickly the city can deliver services and improvements, and what level of service they should receive.

A South Natomas resident, Fargo noted that she had to wait 20 years for her own community center.

She cited the public safety issue, a major preoccupation of North Natomas residents. While she frequently hears complaints about a lack of police services, Fargo said the area has much less violent crime than many other city neighborhoods.

That doesn't mean she thinks North Natomas is a success, however. Fargo has plenty of criticisms about the design of the community whose development she helped oversee. In some cases, she can recite chapter and verse what happened; in others, she's not really sure.

Natomas Marketplace – a congested shopping center on Truxel Road – was rezoned despite her no vote. Wide streets were imposed on the neighborhood by city traffic engineers.

But why does the future regional park have a sound wall along part of its length, with houses turned away and no parking on the street?

"This one embarrasses me, because I feel like I ought to have caught it," she said. "But when you're the only council person looking at the plans, and they're coming so fast ... ."

Fargo has urged that any future development to the north be phased, so the city can oversee it more carefully.

"I'm not interested in doing North Natomas north," Fargo told her colleagues at a recent meeting. "If it can't be on the cover of a national magazine as a model, I don't know why we'd want to do more."

Placer, El Dorado among nation's 50 wealthiest counties Income, home prices, education all go into formula to figure affluence
By G. Scott Thomas of The Sacramento Business Journal

Friday, November 2, 2007

Many of the region’s monied households are in places such as Serrano in El Dorado Hills.

View Larger Placer County's deep-pocketed residents can enjoy a little chest-thumping, fist-pumping and even some Rolex-flashing, at least when it comes to their wealth.

The county finished at No. 43 among the nation's 100 wealthiest suburbs, according to a report released this week. El Dorado County was No. 44.

More than one of every 20 residents earn at least $200,000 per year in El Dorado and Placer counties, according to a report by Bizjournals, a sister company of the Business Journal.

Bizjournals created a nine-part formula to determine the relative affluence of 291 suburban counties, seeking the places with the highest incomes, most expensive houses, lowest poverty levels, strongest educational backgrounds, and most extensive ownership of stocks, rental properties and vehicles.

Placer County had per-capita income of $35,014 per year, but more high-income residents -- 6.8 percent earn at least $200,000 per year -- help increase the rankings. In addition, only 3.8 percent of the county's residents live below the poverty level. And one of every 10 homes has at least nine rooms, from bedrooms to game rooms, according to the report.

El Dorado County also fared well, with 5.9 percent of residents earning $200,000 or more per year, offsetting the $32,122 per-capita income. Less than 4 percent of the county's residents live below the poverty level. But bigger homes are less common, with 8 percent of the homes featuring at least nine rooms.

Big Apple 'burbs
Placer and El Dorado counties are the wealthiest -- and only -- Sacramento-area communities listed on the report, but they pale compared to the rolling hills of northern New Jersey, where dozens of upscale suburbs sprawl within 70 miles of New York City.

All of these havens may consider themselves unique and autonomous, but economist Joseph Seneca views them as a cohesive region. The "wealth belt," he calls it.

The name is appropriate. Almost a million people live in the region's three richest counties -- Hunterdon, Somerset and Morris -- where the income levels are 70 percent above the national average.

"It's an area of high incomes, high housing costs and high quality of life," said Seneca, a Rutgers University professor. "It has become an economic mass of real significance."

Similar "wealth belts" can be found in major metropolitan areas from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. The nation's 100 richest suburban counties, taken as a group, are home to 46 million people whose combined income -- $1.6 trillion per year -- would cause any marketer to salivate.

At the very top of the list, rated by Bizjournals as America's wealthiest suburban county, is Hunterdon County, N.J. Fifteen percent of Hunterdon's households have annual incomes of $200,000 or more, which is 4.5 times the national rate of 3.4 percent.

Second place belongs to Fairfax County, Va., a high-tech hub near Washington, D.C. It has a highly educated, well-paid work force. Six of every 10 Fairfax adults have college degrees, and 15.2 percent of the county's households are in the $200,000-plus income range.

Better than most
The rest of the top 10 consists of two more counties from New Jersey, two from Maryland, and one each from California, Colorado, Connecticut and Virginia.

The 100 counties on Bizjournals' master list easily outstrip the national standard of living, no matter which indicator is used:

Their collective per-capita income is $35,275, 40 percent above the U.S. figure of $25,267.
Eight percent of all households in these wealthy suburbs have annual incomes of $200,000 or more. The national rate is 3.4 percent.
Big homes are much more common in the top 100 counties, where 14.7 percent of all houses have at least nine rooms. The U.S. average is 8.1 percent.
The correlation between income and education is strong, so it's no surprise that the proportion of adults with college degrees is higher in the wealthiest counties: 40.3 percent compared with 27.0 percent for the entire nation.

Grats Mayor Fargo and city council, you only have yourself to blame for this.

Majin for Mayor 2020.

You are right Majin. What a bunch of hypocritical jerks. Suddenly they wake up and realize that all those projects they have approved over the years do not comform to the Natomas Community Plan? Give me a break.

The height of hypocrisy for Fargo to go around as a tour guide pointing out what's wrong. Mayor Fargo in particular is to blame for how Natomas turned out since she was it's representative and the Natomas Plan was her 'baby'. How hard did she fight to maintain the integrity of the plan?

Another proof that these community meetings are for the most part useless.

Although not an urban development at all, I JUST found out about Palladio at Broadstone in Folsom!!! WTF!!!?!??!? That project is HUGE!!! Some of the stores there aren't even at the Galleria!!! I am too exhausted to type them all up. But, just some highlights...Apple, H&M, Talbot's, Z Gallerie, Aeropostale, Ruth's Chris, PF Changs, CPK, Banana Republic, and MORE!! There's 129 stores. I knew NOTHING of this development until just now! I saw the construction. But, just figured we might be talking about some other big boxes like PetSmart or something like that. I never DREAMED it would be anything of this caliber...AND it's right across from the u/c Kaiser Hospital! I am TOTALLY in SHOCK!!!! Here is a link to the map of the development!

[QUOTE=neuhickman79;3196625]Although not an urban development at all, I JUST found out about Palladio at Broadstone in Folsom!!! WTF!!!?!??!?

An H & M in Folsom??? Geez. I always hoped for Sacramento to snag one of those. That's a cool store. I always thought of H&M in really metropolitan areas so, I am really shocked to hear of one in Folsom. Wow

This mall has been planned since at least the early 90's. I don't think the Kaiser hospital came on board until much later, but it's a good addition to the site.

The silly thing is there is a Cold Stone just down the street at another shopping center and what would be a competing Border's in that same center.

The news isn't about the center itself. The news is about the tenants. I was reading some other forums online from people living in Folsom and as recent as August they were thinking this was going to be another boring average shopping center with nothing unique about it. The fact is, there's at least 4 or 5 stores that have never been in the Sacramento area before. That's what's surprising!

The news isn't about the center itself. The news is about the tenants. I was reading some other forums online from people living in Folsom and as recent as August they were thinking this was going to be another boring average shopping center with nothing unique about it. The fact is, there's at least 4 or 5 stores that have never been in the Sacramento area before. That's what's surprising!

You're right ...I knew there was something coming to Folsom too; for years i've heard of that shopping center coming there, to complement the other anchor shopping malls in Roseville and the one planned in Elk Grove (which makes it more of an urgent matter to get Downtown Plaza fixed.Now)....I love H&M, but Sacramento should be getting that, being that's so trendy and affordable -in Folsom!?!?!? Anyways, good lineup.